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Black Sabbath (album)
Black Sabbath is the debut studio album by English heavy metal band Black Sabbath. Released on February 13, 1970 in the United Kingdom, and later on June 1, 1970 in the United States, the album reached number eight on the UK Albums Chart and has been recognised as one of the main albums to be credited with the development of the heavy metal genre. Recording In August 1969 the band, who were then known as Earth, decided to change their name to Black Sabbath. This was because there was another band also known as Earth; the name is also an homage to the 1963 classic Mario Bava terror film starring Boris Karloff. Around the same time they recorded and distributed a demo version of their eponymous song. In December 1969 they recorded and released their debut single, "Evil Woman". In January 1970, the band recorded and mixed the remaining seven songs that would appear on their debut album. According to guitarist Tony Iommi, "We just went in the studio and did it in a day, we played our live set and that was it. We actually thought a whole day was quite a long time, then off we went the next day to play for £20 in Switzerland." Iommi recalls recording live: "We thought 'We have two days to do it and one of the days is mixing.' So we played live. Ozzy was singing at the same time, we just put him in a separate booth and off we went. We never had a second run of most of the stuff." Music and Lyrics Musically and lyrically the album was considered quite "dark" for the time. The first song on the album is based almost entirely on a tritone interval played at slow tempo on the electric guitar. The song's lyrics concern a "figure in black" which bass player Geezer Butler claims to have seen after waking up from a nightmare. Similarly, the lyrics of the song "N.I.B." are written from the point of view of Lucifer. Contrary to popular belief, the name of that song is not an initialism for "Nativity in Black". Tony Iommi said in several interviews that it is merely a reference to drummer Bill Ward's pointed goatee at the time, which was shaped as a pen-nib. Lyrics of two other songs on the album were written about supernatural-themed stories. "Behind the Wall of Sleep" is a reference to the H. P. Lovecraft short story Beyond the Wall of Sleep, while "The Wizard" was inspired by the character of Gandalf from The Lord of The Rings The latter includes harmonica performed by vocalist Ozzy Osbourne. Both the songs "Warning" and "Evil Woman" are covers of Blues songs, with lyrics regarding relationships. The first was written and performed by Aynsley Dunbar's Retaliation, and the second was written and performed by the band Crow. Artwork The album cover features a depiction of Mapledurham Watermill, situated on the River Thames in Oxfordshire, England. Standing in front of the watermill is a figure dressed in black. The silhouette of a raven is visible among the trees on the back cover. On the original release, the inner gate-fold sleeve featured an Inverted Cross with a poem written inside of it. Vertigo, the band's UK record label, were allegedly responsible for adding the cross. Allegedly, the band were upset when they discovered this, as it fuelled allegations that they were Satanists or Occultists. Although, in Osbourne's recent biography, "I Am Ozzy", he says that to the best of his knowledge that nobody was upset with the inclusion. The album was not packaged with a gate-fold cover in the U.S. Release Released on Friday the 13th February 1970 by Vertigo Records, Black Sabbath reached number eight on the UK Album Chart. Following its US release in June 1970 by Warner Bros. Records, the album reached number 23 on the Billboard 200, where it remained for over a year, selling a million copies. Legacy The album has also been credited for pioneering Heavy Metal, Stoner Rock, and Goth. In 2003, the album was ranked number 241 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time despite the cold reception the magazine gave the album when it first came out. Critical Reception While the album was a commercial success and is now lauded as perhaps the first true heavy metal album,[1] upon its release it was widely panned by critics. In a review for Rolling Stone magazine, rock critic Lester Bangs felt Sabbath was "just like Cream! But worse". Bangs dismissed Black Sabbath as "a shuck—despite the murky songtitles and some inane lyrics that sound like Vanilla Fudge paying doggerel tribute to Aleister Crowley, the album has nothing to do with spiritualism, the occult, or anything much except stiff recitations of Cream clichés". Robert Christgau wrote in The Villiage Voice that the album was "the worst of the counterculture on a plastic platter", nonetheless failing to recognize that the record was merely one of the burgeoning multifarious styles of rock in the period. Historical precedent later proving that the work had far more influence upon, and instantiation within Rock Music than much (Theolonius Monk being a useful prime example) of what was lauded by this same critic as referential to the nature of rock. With the passage of time, reviews have become less reactionary, such as Steve Huey's for Allmusic in which he writes that "Sabbath's slowed-down, murky guitar rock bludgeons the listener in an almost hallucinatory fashion, reveling in its own dazed, druggy state of consciousness" and "there are plenty of metal classics already here". Track Listing. # "Black Sabbath" - 6:16 # "The Wizard" - 4:24 # "Behind the Wall of Sleep" - 3:38 # "N.I.B." - 6:06 # "Evil Woman" - 3:25 # "Sleeping Village" - 3:46 # "Warning" - 10:32 Personnel Black Sabbath *Ozzy Osbourne - Vocals, Harmonica *Tony Iommi - Guitars *Geezer Butler - Bass *Bill Ward - Drums Recording Process *Rodger Bain - Production *Tom Allom - Recording *Barry Sheffield - Engineering *Marcus Keef - Graphic Design, Photography Video's Category:1970 albums